


Mercy

by commodorecliche



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Affection, Angst, Catharsis, Devotion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, M/M, Mention of injuries, Recovery, SHEITH - Freeform, Self-Doubt, There's a lot of hugging and touching and forehead touching and such, They'll be okay, Training with battle droids and with Keith can bring out a lot of emotions, clone shiro - Freeform, just keith's injuries, love and support, physical affection, sheithmonth2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 12:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15142781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commodorecliche/pseuds/commodorecliche
Summary: mercy.noun. compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.In the aftermath of Lotor’s defeat, the destruction of the Castle, and his battle with Keith, Shiro just wants to recover. But when faced with Keith and his warmth and readiness to help him, Shiro can’t help but question if he truly deserves the love and mercy Keith has to offer him.





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Day 2 of Sheith Month 2018 for the prompt "Training". I figure Shiro has a lot of recovery to do - both physically and emotionally. He tries to dive into the physical recovery, training with a droid, but winds up dealing with his emotional recovery instead. 
> 
> (This is just a lot of hurt/comfort, okay?)

Combat training with one arm is… more difficult than Shiro thought it would be.

He’d known it would be hard and would take some adjusting to, but he hadn’t anticipated it would be as challenging as it actually is. Even with the newly-developed battle droids set to their easiest setting, even facing only one at a time, rather than warding off multiple at once, Shiro still struggles to come out on top. Hell, these new droids that Coran developed aren’t even as refined as the old Castle’s sentries. They’re newer and buggier, not nearly as swift, and yet he’s _still_ second best to them.

He can throw a punch just fine, but his balance is off and he’s clumsy trying to wield a weapon in his non-dominant hand.

He’ll get better, it will just take time and Shiro knows that. But the frustration that pools in the pit of his stomach every time he misses a blow or gets knocked off his feet is close to sickening. Yet still, he trains on. He pushes through exhaustion, pushes through frustration all with the hope that if he just tries hard enough, he’ll do better.

But he doesn’t do better.

Each round is a laughable excuse for a ‘fight’. Each time, it seems to only take a few moments before the sentry has him on the ground in one way or another. Shiro’s lost count of how many times he started and restarted each sparring session, each one seemingly ending the same way as the last.

And this round is no different. Shiro gets in a few good hits before the sentry weasels out an advantage, using his balance or his clumsiness against him. It bests him in five solid moves, and once again, Shiro is pinned flat on his back with the sentry’s staff bearing into his chest. Once it’s won, the sentry stops, stands straight, then steps away, its objective complete. Shiro heaves a sigh and wrenches himself to sit upright as soon as the droid has moved away.

“Round 26 complete,” the sentry warbles in its mechanical voice, “Preparing for round 27. Is opponent ready?”

Shiro huffs, his breath still unsteady from the scuffle, and shakes his head. He bends his knees and slumps his arm across them, elbow resting against his kneecap as he stares at the machine across from him, already poised for another battle.

“Ugh. No. Disengage.”

“Disengaging combat sequence.”

The droid relaxes its stance, it’s staff now held loosely at its side, and stands still at attention. Shiro twists his head to the left and lowers it, pressing his face into his bicep with another frustrated huff. He lifts his head back up and cranes to his right. He stares at the empty space where his right arm used to be, now just a stump of mangled meat and sinew.

What he wouldn’t give to have his arm again.

But there’s nothing to be done, nothing he can give.

Getting his real arm back is out of the question. By now, he’s resigned himself and accepted the fact that he will never again have an arm made of flesh and blood.

And his prosthetic… That advanced, mechanical wonder of a prosthetic given to him by the Galra. It had done nothing but turn him into a killer.

_“Shiro, please!!”_

Keith’s voice reverberates through his skull. It’s a painful memory, one he would trade his life just to be rid of. Keith frantic and desperate, pinned beneath his burning hand, swallowed by his bloodthirsty stare as he begged Shiro to please just _remember_ . As Keith begged him to _come back_ from wherever he was.

_“I love you!”_

But even that hadn’t been enough.

It hadn’t been _him_ . Shiro knows that. It was just a brainwashed clone. But that thought had never soothed him. In a way, that clone _was_ him. In a way, the monster that had pinned Keith to the ground, threatened to tear him limb from limb had still been Shiro.

It had his body, his arm, his brain. All his memories. His hopes and dreams.

His affections. His weaknesses.

_“I love you!”_

Shiro clenches his eyes shut and sighs. He draws his knees more tightly against his chest and stays that way until a soft _‘hey’_ from across the room draws his attention.

Keith stands in the doorway of the training room, leant up against the doorframe with his eyes fixated on Shiro in an affectionate stare.

“Hey,” Shiro replies.

“You look a bit tuckered,” Keith jests as he enters the room and moves to stand by where Shiro is seated on the floor.

“Just… been busy getting my ass handed to me by a second rate droid.”

He doesn’t mean for his tone to be as sardonic or as self-deprecating as it is, but it comes out that way whether he likes it or not.

Keith bends his knees and squats down by Shiro’s side.

“Hard without your arm?”

“That’s putting it lightly.”

Keith’s hand squeezes his left shoulder, massaging the muscle there with reverent compassion.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I know,” Shiro mumbles with a nod, “it’s just… hard.”

“Maybe Coran could, I don’t know, engineer something for you?”

Shiro hmmphs and bobs his head in consideration for a second.

“Heh, I don’t know that I’m ready for another robo arm.”

He half-expects Keith to protest, to insist that whatever Coran developed for him would be fine. To tell him that it would be invariably _good_. Nothing at all like the Galra’s prosthetic. And Keith would be right, but Shiro isn’t ready for it. And Keith doesn’t object.

Instead, he simply nods and smiles his understanding.

“Yeah, I get ya.”

Shiro stares at him.

Keith has a hard exterior - a defense mechanism built from the years he spent on his own, years spent fending for himself, defending his existence to the world and to himself. But beyond it there has always been a raw and vulnerable kindness that radiates from Keith.

And he radiates it now, sending tenderness and warmth to Shiro through even the smallest of gestures. A nod, a smile, and a gentle word of understanding. And even though Shiro knows that kindness is there, somehow it still always catches him off guard when Keith offers it to him without question. Not because he’s surprised that Keith would possess such humanity or warmth, but rather because Shiro wonders if he _deserves_ to receive such compassion from Keith at all.

He’s not sure if he deserves the sort of love Keith has to give.

He has to look away.

Shiro presses his face against his knees, mushing his mouth against his kneecaps, and keeps his eyes fixated on the motionless training droid across from them. A few beats pass between them, and Shiro can’t tell if it’s comfortable or not.

“I never actually… _apologized_ … for what I- or, I mean, for what that Shiro did.” Shiro's words are a bit muffled, muted by his kneecaps as he speaks into them, but he’s sure Keith has heard him.

Keith shakes his head and rests a hand on Shiro’s back. He drags his fingers up and down along his spine in a constant, soothing motion.

“Because there’s nothing to apologize for.”

Shiro doesn’t turn his head but he darts his eyes to the left to glance at Keith’s face again. The scar that’s burned across his cheek is red and angry: a glaring reminder of the damage Shiro has done. He yanks his eyes away just as quickly as he’d looked.

Now, more than ever, Shiro feels so very undeserving of Keith’s understanding.

“Hey,” Keith starts, changing the subject, “you wanna do a little training together? Like old times?” Keith must see the hesitancy in Shiro’s brow, because he follows the request up quickly, “It might be better than just duking it out with a hunk of junk, you know?”

Shiro lifts his head from his knees.

“Yeah, okay.”

Keith smiles at that - and for a split second, things almost feel normal between them. Things almost feel as they did before Shiro had even left for Kerberos all those years ago.

My god, it really has been _years_ since that day. Years since that single decision changed his - and Keith’s - entire life. He can’t help but wonder how different things might have been for them had he not gone to that moon. Would the war have still come knocking at their door if he hadn’t gone to Kerberos? If he hadn’t left Keith behind?

But he doesn’t have time to mull on it. Keith has already stood up and stripped himself of his t-shirt, leaving him in just his plain, red tank top.

As soon as his hands are wrapped, Keith begins to dig and sift through the cabinets of the training room.

“I swear there are some boxing pads and gloves in here somewhere. Lance said he found them at that stupid Earth Store in the mall. Aha, here we go.”

He drags out a few practice weapons, as well as a couple pairs of pads and gloves, and tosses them on the floor.

“Did you wanna just start hand to hand or were you thinking weapon practice or?”

Shiro hesitates, eyes skimming over the array of weaponry on the floor. He bites his lip.

“My weapon handling needs work but… let’s…”

A brief flash of himself holding a burning blade to Keith’s neck, to his face, invades Shiro’s head,

_“Shiro, please!”_

“Let’s just do hand to hand.”

Keith - empathetic as always - nods his understanding. He slips on a pair of boxing pads and moves to stand in front of Shiro.

“Okay, sounds good. Whenever you’re ready.”

They start with a jab, cross, hook routine. Shiro has to throw all three punches with one hand, and it’s more than a little awkward. But Keith is patient - a trait he’s grown into so well - and guides Shiro along with constancy, meeting him where he needs to be. They move about the room as they change up the pattern. Each motion gets Shiro more accustomed to having to shift his weight for different punches, gets him more accustomed to no longer having a counterweight on his right side.

“Good!” Keith yells with every successful contact Shiro’s fast makes with the pads. And by the end of a quick practice round, Shiro is already feeling more confident.

They pause the round and Keith yanks the pads off his fists and adjusts his wraps. He strides over to the wall and grabs a pair of gloves for himself.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re compensating and shifting your weight really well now, why not move to a little actual hand to hand?”

Shiro stares at his own gloved hands, then up at Keith’s face. The scar on his right cheek is a vibrant peachy red - still fresh, still healing - and there’s a bruise on Keith’s other cheek and a stitched up cut on his left eyebrow.

Shiro hadn’t noticed those before.

Had he done that? He must have.

The rational part of his brain reminds Shiro that, even after his battle with Keith, the team went into combat, and that those other injuries could very well be from that. But the unreasonable side of him won’t let him hear it.

_Those bruises are from me. The cut on his eyebrow is from the blow of my fist against Keith’s face._

Shiro must look on edge, because Keith has suddenly stepped into his space and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, we don’t have to do this if you’re not comfortable,” Keith tells him.

Shiro shakes his head.

“No, it’s… it’s fine.”

“Really, Shiro, we don’t have to. I just want to help. I want to make you feel… like yourself again. However that may be.”

Shiro shakes his head ‘no’ again.

“It’s okay, let’s do it.”

“You’re sure?”

Shiro shoots him a curt nod.

“Yeah. We’ll… we’ll stop if I’m not.”

“Of course.”

**::**

He lets Keith throw the first punch. Partly so he can learn to block a blow with his left arm, or dodge a hit while off balance, but partly because Shiro can’t bring himself to begin another fight.  

Keith takes it easy on him: a mercy that Shiro isn’t sure he deserves.

Part of him knows that the gentleness of each punch, the lack of determination in Keith’s motions, are simply because they’re training and not actually fighting. But they’ve trained harder than this before and Shiro can’t fathom why Keith would still show him kindness or clemency after what all he - or his Other - did.

He deserves worse than this.

He deserves a bruise on one cheek and a burn on the other. He deserves stitches across his own brow. He deserves to suffer the way he - or a part of him - has made Keith suffer.

Shiro holds his own punches back, but with a grunt, he tells Keith,

“You don’t have to hold back.”

Keith shakes his head and sends another gentle jab Shiro’s way. His voice is calm and steady when he replies.

“We don’t need to go all out. Just…. Let’s find a rhythm, okay?”

“Are we training or _not_ ?” Shiro hisses, a bit more aggressively than he intends to, “Just _hit_ me.”

The raw force behind his tone clearly catches Keith off guard, judging by the rapid furrow of Keith’s brow at Shiro’s demand. Shiro doesn’t put any more strength behind his own punches, but prays that the next hit Keith sends him will be hard enough to bruise.

“What? No. Come on, Shiro, let’s just work on form, yeah?”

“Why won’t you just fight me?” Shiro demands.

“We aren’t fighting, Shiro.”

Keith stops then, and puts his hands up to block Shiro’s next half-hearted jab.

“Let’s pause. Let’s just take a second, okay?”

Shiro wrenches his head back and forth.  
  
“No, I wanna keep going, come _on_.”

He takes a step closer, but Keith doesn’t react. He doesn’t step away, he doesn’t put his hands up.

“Just _hit me_ , Keith.” Shiro insists again.

He’s in Keith’s space now, close enough to tower over him. And the look on Keith’s face is a wretched mixture of confusion and heartache. It seems something hot and painful scorching through Shiro’s chest.

“I’m not… I’m not going to _hit you_ , Shiro.”

Shiro stares down at Keith in some desperate attempt to ground himself, to draw himself back from whatever guilt-laden path he’s started down, but Keith’s face is awash in all of Shiro’s failings.

He can’t see the care Keith is trying to show him now. Instead of affection, there are only the wounds. The fading blue-green tint on Keith’s left cheek. The wrinkled, still-healing burn across right cheek and jaw. The swollen skin of his brow, distended around his stitches, inflamed and trying to consume the very strings that hold it together.

“Fucking just _hit me_!” His voice cracks as he speaks, but he doesn’t know how to draw back the quiver in his tone.  

Keith shakes his head again.  

“No.”

He lifts one hand to cradle Shiro’s jaw. Shiro’s chest is suddenly very tight, his throat closing and opening of its own accord. It’s hard to breathe. He must sound erratic now. He doesn’t even bother to hold back the frantic, breathy whimper that slips out from his chest at Keith’s touch.

“Hey, no, no. It's okay,” Keith comforts, fingers stroking firmly across his cheek as he takes a step further into Shiro’s space. He keeps head craned back so he can keep his eyes upward and focused on Shiro’s face. “God, Shiro, _talk_ to me.”

Shiro jostles his head left to right - a small gesture, but still a desperate refusal.

What is there to say? What can he possibly say?

He feels unsteady.

Shiro puts his left hand on Keith’s hip. Eyes focused on Keith’s face, on his wounds, on the grief and the worry in his eyes, Shiro sinks down to his knees. His fingers curl and cling to the fabric of Keith’s tank top as Shiro stares up at him.

He’s at Keith’s mercy - the only place he truly deserves to be - but Keith still looks upon him with warmth.

Keith hasn’t let go of his face.

Desperate, pleading, Shiro looks at his companion. At the friend he’s so grievously harmed time and time again. He stares up at the man he left behind, the man he dragged into a war, the man he abandoned, the man he tried to kill. And the compassion and love in Keith’s express is far to good for someone like him.  

“Please,” Shiro starts. His cheeks are wet, but he barely has the cognizance to notice his own tears right now, “Please, Keith.”

Keith doesn’t reply but he brings his other hand to Shiro’s jaw as well. He cradles Shiro’s face with tenderness, his thumbs dragging across Shiro’s cheeks, wiping away the wetness they find there.

It’s kindness. It’s mercy. It’s far too much for him.  

Shiro lifts his hand from Keith’s hip and rests it instead on his forearm. His eyes fixate and bear into Keith’s own and he wonders what Keith must see in him.

Guilt?

Madness?

Grief?

Surely all of that.

“Please, goddamnit just hit me…” Shiro pleads with him again. He’s begging for a mercy killing he knows Keith won’t give him.

Keith doesn’t hesitate to refuse once again.

“No. Stop…”  

“Keith, please. Hit me, beat me, god, do _something._ It’s what I deserve… after what I did…”

As soon as the words have left Shiro’s lips, Keith drops to his knees in front of him. He wipes away a few stray tears from Shiro’s cheeks and relinquishes his hold on Shiro’s face so he can wrap his arms around his shoulders instead. In one smooth motion, he draws Shiro into his embrace.

“No, it’s fucking _not_ what you deserve,” Keith hisses into his ear.

It must be instinct, because Shiro doesn’t even think before his arm has laced fully around Keith’s middle. He holds Keith almost as tightly as Keith holds him, and for a split second, he feels like himself again.

Shiro buries his face in Keith’s neck.

“It’s _not_ what you deserve, Shiro.” Keith tells him again.

One of Keith’s hands comes to cradle the back of Shiro’s head, fingers playing in the soft, white hair there.

“It wasn’t you.”

Shiro shakes his head against Keith’s neck.

“It wasn’t me,” Shiro agrees with a groan, followed immediately by nod of disagreement. He mumbles into Keith’s skin, “But it _was_. He loved you like I did, saw you the way I did… He was no different than me… And look what he, what I did.”  

Keith only holds him tighter.

“It wasn’t you.”

Keith pats the back of Shiro’s head, a silence request for Shiro to lift his head away from Keith’s neck. He obeys with reluctance. As soon as his head is up, Keith presses their temples and cheeks together. His lips just barely graze the shell of Shiro’s ear as his whispers his insistences.

“You did nothing wrong.”

“But I,” Shiro protests again, but Keith won’t let him finish.

“Shiro, listen to me. You did _nothing_ wrong.”

His tone is more firm this time, but a little more urgent, almost desperate for Shiro to hear him. Keith pulls his head back another couple inches so he can look at Shiro’s face. He presses his forehead against Shiro’s, nuzzling their noses together as his eyes slip closed.

“Tell me,” Keith demands.

“Tell you what?” Shiro whispers.

“You did nothing wrong. It wasn’t you.”

Can he say that? Can he say that and not feel like a liar?

Keith seems so sure, so tied to the idea.

It wasn’t him, and still it was, and the space between the conflict is tearing him apart.

“It wasn't,” Shiro starts, but hesitates.

“It wasn't what?”

“It wasn’t me…”

“ _You_ didn’t hurt me, Shiro, okay? It wasn’t you, okay?”

Shiro nods against Keith’s forehead, his eyes clenched shut.

“Okay.”

There isn’t much conviction in his voice, maybe there never will be.

But for a moment, just for now, he wants to believe it.

**::**

  


**Author's Note:**

> man i think i have a thing for putting characters into sparring situations. this is probably the third thing i've written that's set in a sparring situation. oh well, i like what i like. 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading! Your responses truly mean the world to me, so if you liked this, maybe leave me a comment? Or perhaps a kudo. 
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](https://commodorecliche.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/commodorecliche). 
> 
> [rebloggable tumblr version](http://commodorecliche.tumblr.com/post/175483990353/mercy-commodorecliche-shirokeith-vld)


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